Crowds: Anonymity for Web Transactions

In this paper we introduce a system called Crowds for protecting users' anonymity on the world-wide-web. Crowds, named for the notion of "blending into a crowd", operates by grouping users into a large and geographically diverse group (crowd) that collectively issues requests on behalf of its members. Web servers are unable to learn the true source of a request because it is equally likely to have originated from any member of the crowd, and indeed collaborating crowd members cannot distinguish the originator of a request from a member who is merely forwarding the request on behalf of another. We describe the design, implementation, security, performance, and scalability of our system. Our security analysis introduces degrees of anonymity as an important tool for describing and proving anonymity properties. 1 Introduction Every man should know that his conversations, his correspondence, and his personal life are private. --- Lyndon B. Johnson, president of the United States, 1963--..